{"id":16805,"date":"2017-05-09T07:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T07:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=16805"},"modified":"2017-05-08T16:33:11","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T16:33:11","slug":"guardians-of-the-galaxy-prelude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2017\/05\/09\/guardians-of-the-galaxy-prelude\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians of the Galaxy Prelude"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning<\/strong>, Mike Friedrich<\/strong>, Bill Mantlo<\/strong>, Stan Lee<\/strong>, Larry Lieber, Steve Englehart, Wellinton Alves<\/strong>, Daniel Govar<\/strong>, Andrea Di Vito<\/strong>, Jim Starlin<\/strong>, Sal Buscema<\/strong>, Steve Gan<\/strong>, Bob McLeod<\/strong> & various (Marvel)
\nISBN: 978-0-7851-5410-5<\/p>\n

With another Marvel Filmic Fantasy premiering around the world, here’s a timely trade paperback collection to augment the cinematic exposure and cater to movie fans wanting to follow up with a comics experience.<\/p>\n

Comprising a big bunch of reprints and digital material designed to supplement the first movie release, this compilation contains Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Prelude<\/strong> #1-2, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Infinite Comic<\/strong> #1 and Guardians of the Galaxy <\/strong>#0.1, plus debut or early appearances of Drax<\/em>, Gamora<\/em>, Rocket Raccoon<\/em>, Groot<\/em> and Star-Lord<\/em> as first seen in Iron Man<\/strong> #55, Strange Tales<\/strong> #181, Incredible Hulk<\/strong> #271, Tales to Astonish<\/strong> #13 and Marvel Preview<\/strong> #4.<\/p>\n

Thanks to all that fabulous, futuristic technology, you can even look at this treasure chest of thrills on screen too through its digital iteration if you prefer\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The sky-high high jinks kick off with a glimpse at the frankly horrific childhoods of Gamora and Nebula<\/em> with big daddy Thanos<\/em>, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Wellinton Alves & Manny Clark: set just before the first film begins (the clue’s in the name as it comes from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Prelude<\/strong> #1), after which # 2 provides a similarly candid review of Rocket and Groot as their quest for cash draws them into a questionably legal repo job for a criminal big shot\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Next up is Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Infinite Comic<\/strong> #1 by Abnett & Lanning, storyboarder Daniel Govar and artist Andrea Di Vito: a screen-based adventure, rather uncomfortably reformatted for the printed page. Here Taneleer Tivan, The Collector<\/em> commissions Gamora with the retrieval of a certain Orb\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Of course, all these plot strands get knotted together in the movie\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The classic appearances kick off with Iron Man<\/strong>#55 (February 1973), scripted by Mike Friedrich and illustrated by Jim Starlin & Mike Esposito. ‘Beware The \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Blood Brothers!’<\/em> introduces Drax the Destroyer, an incredibly powerful alien\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 or so he seems at first glance.<\/p>\n

Trapped by another extraterrestrial newcomer – Thanos – under the desert, Drax is rescued by the Armoured Avenger, but it’s merely a prelude to the main story which appeared in Captain Marvel<\/strong> #25-33, a saga to be savoured elsewhere\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Gamora was first seen in Strange Tales<\/strong> #181 (August 1975), as Avatar of Life Adam Warlock<\/em> made his way across the cosmos, battling the depredations of the Universal Church of Truth and his own evil future self The Magus<\/em>. Technically it was her second, but in this yarn she got a name and speaking part\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

‘1000 Clowns!’<\/em> – by Starlin and Al Milgrom – saw the accursed hero trapped in an insidious psychic prison even as in the notionally real world, a green-skinned gamin was slowly eradicating his tormentors. She was about to free the golden saviour, when Warlock escaped under his own steam. If he’d known that Gamora was actually working for his cosmic nemesis Thanos, he might not have bothered\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Rocket Raccoon<\/strong> was a minor character who first appeared in backup serial ‘The Sword in the Star’<\/em>. His actual debut was in Marvel Preview<\/strong> #7 in 1976 but in 1982, writer Bill Mantlo brought him into the mainstream of the Marvel Universe with a choice starring role in Incredible Hulk<\/strong> #271 (May 1982).<\/p>\n

Like Wolverine<\/em> and the<\/em> Punisher<\/em> years before, the foul-mouthed, fuzzy faced iconoclast then simply refused to go away quietly\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Illustrated by Sal Buscema, ‘Now Somewhere in the Black Holes of Sirius Major There Lived a Young Boy Name of\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Rocket Raccoon!’<\/em> find Earth’s jade juggernaut stranded on an alien world where sentient animals used super-scientific gadgetry to battle robot clowns. They do this to preserve the security of humans who seem incapable of caring for themselves. When Green-skin arrives, a simmering civil war is just breaking out\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

With the Hulk safely removed from the combat zone, Rocket faded from view for a few years before returning in a new-fangled format for comicbooks: a miniseries\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

More sidereal shenanigans surface in an absolute classic of the gloriously whacky \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Kirby Kritter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d genre, predating the birth of the Marvel Age. Crafted by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers, ‘I Challenged Groot! The Monster from Planet X’<\/em> (Tales to Astonish<\/strong> #13, November\/December 1960) reveals how a studious biologist saves humanity from a rapacious walking tree intent on stealing Earth cities and shipping them back to his distant world. The tree titan might have started life as a disposable notion, but he too grew into a larger role over the unfolding decades\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Notional leading man Star-Lord<\/em> premiered in monochrome mature-reader magazine Marvel Preview<\/strong> # 4 (January 1976), appearing thrice more – in #11, 14 and 15 – during the height of the Star Wars<\/strong>-inspired Science Fiction explosion of the late 1970s and 1980s.<\/p>\n

Years previously a warrior prince of an interstellar empire was shot down over Colorado and had a brief fling with solitary Earther Meredith Quill<\/em>. Despite his desire to remain in idyllic isolation, duty called the starman back to the battle and he left, leaving behind an unborn son and a unique weapon\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

A decade later, the troubled boy saw his mother assassinated by alien lizard men. Peter Jason Quill<\/em> vengefully slew the creatures with Meredith’s shotgun, before his home was explosively destroyed by a flying saucer.<\/p>\n

The orphan awoke in hospital, his only possession a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153toy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ray-gun his mother had hidden from him his entire life. He became obsessed with the stars – astronomy and astrology – and overcame all odds to become a part of America’s budding space program\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but he made no friends and plenty of enemies on the way\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Years later his destiny found him, as the half-breed scion was elevated by the divinity dubbed the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Master of the Sun\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, becoming Star-Lord. Rejecting both Earth and his missing father, Peter chose freedom, the pursuit of justice and the expanse of the cosmos\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

From such disparate strands movie gold can be made, but never forget that the originating material is pretty damned good too and will deliver a tempting tray of treats that should have most curious fans scurrying for back-issue boxes, bookshop shelves or online emporia\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 1960, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1982, 2014 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Mike Friedrich, Bill Mantlo, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Steve Englehart, Wellinton Alves, Daniel Govar, Andrea Di Vito, Jim Starlin, Sal Buscema, Steve Gan, Bob McLeod & various (Marvel) ISBN: 978-0-7851-5410-5 With another Marvel Filmic Fantasy premiering around the world, here’s a timely trade paperback collection to augment the cinematic … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Guardians of the Galaxy Prelude”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[182,79,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guardians-of-the-galaxy-graphic-novels","category-marvel-superheroes","category-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-4n3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}